


Heart-Shaped Box

by CypressSunn



Series: One Hundred and One Shots [14]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Autopsies, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 20:52:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18301724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: Ever bored by simple men, Rosa rolled her gauzy eyes and cocked her head to the side, asked Liz with cracked black lips if she read her horoscope today;‘in the retrograde of Jupiter be prepared to meet a handsome stranger; you are going to die in his arms.’





	Heart-Shaped Box

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my 101 Shots challenge, based on prompt #46: Loss.

_"Meat-eating orchids forgive no one just yet_  
_Cut myself on angel hair and baby's breath_  
_Broken hymen of your Highness, I'm left back_  
_Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back"_  
_— Nirvana_

 

 

 

Denial. 

She still dreamt of the bullet and the home it made of her chest. Dreamt of its trajectory, delivered of its barrel-shaped birth canal along a trance of gunsmoke. Dreamt that she too was a projectile; crossfired in Earth’s orbit. Every rotation around the sun leading her to the standstill. There, where they were meant to find each other. Her and the bullet; the tragedy and her. A destiny fulfilled, clearest when the music cut out and the lights dimmed, the whole world held its breath in stunned applause. Flowers on the stage, roses on a grave. The final point of impact where Liz Ortecho ceased to be, replaced by a cold that bled from cavities, an atrophying mind smeared to the linoleum.

Somewhere, someone failed to staunch the bleeding. Somewhere else, Rosa’s voice broke through; the tenor of glass breaking just as the jukebox skipped.

Haloed under the fluorescent shadows, long-limbed and silent movers carried her out, away, further in the dark to the place where dead things go. There the men stood over the corpse. Men always stand over the works of other men to marvel at themselves. Called her ‘dead on arrival’ and ‘massive arterial hemorrhage’ and ‘possible illegal.’ Carved a question in her chest, twisting the scalpel like the key that unlocked her ribcage. They looked and looked for answers but only find the bullet. It clunks into a weighted pan and Liz wondered if it missed her.

The men are still looking, elbow deep latex from sternum to diaphragm; but something is missing between the two deflated lungs; an empty half-formed wish wrapped in a misshapen organ. It made no sense, they said, a girl living without a heart. So they exhumed Rosa and roll her in- dissect her, too, for good measure. There they find it; one beneath the other, two dead hearts pumping formalin.

Piece by piece the men drew the organs out, an arrayment between them. Two autopsied statistics and the cold men who couldn’t tell where one sad brown girl ended and the other began. Ever bored by simple men, Rosa rolled her gauzy eyes and cocked her head to the side, asked Liz with cracked black lips if she read her horoscope today; ‘ _in the retrograde of Jupiter_ _be prepared to meet a handsome stranger; you are going to die in his arms.’_

*

When Liz woke, she would scramble, sweating, swearing, tangled in linens. Clutching her chest she told herself- _there is no bullet_ . No incisions or sutures or phantom hands rooting around inside her; pale hands in rubber and dead hands with black broken nails and hands that weren't human, hands like a lover’s, handprints that slip into the dark. The truth battled out inside her like a broken mantra; _she died, she lived, she died, she lived, she-_

-outlived Rosa, twice. And that might have been the real nightmare. Worse than a world without Max Evan’s hands on her exit wounds. Worse even than living long enough to learn the truth.

* * *

 

Anger.

Liz knew the instant he saw her because the clock stopped. The second hand of the mounted analog face ticked and ticked, going nowhere above the lined waiting-area chairs. Next, the light fixtures strained, white hot and scintillating. A sustained hiss charged the dusty station air, louder than the morning drunks or the bickering bondsmen, a buzzing crackle that heaved and heaved as the light faded and gathered again. An electric intake of breath that held so long it must have hurt. Something had to give.

And Liz would not be the one to flinch.

Somewhere in the station, behind the racks and rows of paperwork and locked doors and holding cells and the goddamn specter of flak jacketed ICE agents, Deputy Evans was watching her. There, she imagined, was where the telltale pop of broken glass came from. A shattered light bulb giving way under pain of the surge. The lighting blinked out, than steadied dim and low. Liz dug her fingers from the pleather seating and finally exhaled.

_Max-_

Her name was called and she was shooed into Sheriff Valenti’s office with little pretense save for a few prying questions about holding up after Wyatt Long’s attack. Liz stuttered through a few declarative lies, thrown by the dizzying recall of what had transpired only the day before when the night ten years past felt closer.

Grant Green felt long dead, forgotten even, while Rosa only freshly buried.

Sheriff Valenti folded her hands prim and neat over documents block stamped with ICE and began, “I think I know why your here, Elizabeth. And I believe I understand why you think it's in your best interest, but-”

“There is no mistake, Sheriff. I want the charges dropped. All of them.” Liz had barely gotten the words out before the lights shuddered yet again. Something smashed on the other side of the textured glass door.

_Max-_

Liz kept her face fixed and sincere over gritted teeth.

Sheriff Valenti nodded with an impassive look that ignored the faulty wiring the same as she did the proposed miscarriage of justice. “Long’s record will be expunged of your assault. He’ll have to make do with the charges of shooting at my deputy and Grant Green. That aside,” the sheriff opened her hands, a swept gesture over the folders atop her desk, “it will be like you were never there.”

“ _Gracias_ ,” Liz pressed out, halfway to the door. She had done what she needed to. She did not look back. Not at the stray dismissive frown the Sheriff and all the other good, privileged, documented _chicanos_ in Roswell reserved for families like hers. The bad ones, the border crosses, the so-called epidemic.

Outside the hallways of the station had worsened. The thrumming static in the air, rumbling as an overhead aircraft but never carrying into the distance. A storm indoors with the windows jammed.

_Max-_

He was everywhere and nowhere. As Liz marched past a desk with his lacquered nameplate, she saw no trace of him save for an almost overturned chair and a shattered mug. The night he rescued her father Arturo had said he ordered his coffee at crashdown often; _“never drinks it but he tips well. He asks about you.”_

Liz swallowed down, the knife in her throat the only thing keeping down the confession, the accusation, the truth.

She felt unseen eyes linger on her, more pronounced than the ICE agent suspicions, the civilian sneers of ‘that junkie Rosa’s sister’. Pulling and pulled at; her the magnet, to him the alloy. Past the intake desk and bored on-duty uniform, her gaze fixed on the vestibule that led to Roswell plaza. In it, the red exit sign had already fried out, trailing thin smoking lines.

When her hand met the metal of the double doors, static electricity lifted rebounded off it so suddenly it sent Liz rocking back into the man she hadn’t realized was right behind her.

_Max._

In a stroke of panic she pushed for the doors but the much taller man wedged them shut with his forearm braced inches over her head. She could not turn around, not without facing him, touching him.

“I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

“Then don’t,” he ceded, voice octaves lower and whisper harsh. He was holding up poorly under the pain. She could tell by the tremor in his unhurt arm, his jagged breathing. The memory of his blood between her fingers flits through her mind; manic and frightful. What oozed from his wounds had felt warm. Felt human. “Don’t turn around, you- you don’t have to look at me. But you need to tell the sheriff that you changed your mind. Long can’t keep getting away with this-”

“He blew Grant Green’s brains out and shot one of Roswell’s finest,” the venom pours out of her mouth. She doesn’t sound like herself. She’s her mother. She’s Rosa.

“Green was a coward, and I- you’re the one who deserves justice, Liz. He attacked you,” Max said. “Locked you in a cage. _He set in it on fire-_ ”

“Should he have waited until after I was dead to burn me?”

Max made a noise, a wounding hitch breath and Liz wants to press on that nerve until it breaks him. It's a power that could become a vice, heady in rage. Liz looked halfway over her shoulder, but not up.

“Maybe Wyatt thought it would be poetic, for me to die like his sister.” It’s not the first time Liz had considered as much. The rationale almost felt comforting.

“He isn't attacking your family out of some misplaced sense of justice, you have to know that.”

“Do I? I mean, you would know all about misplaced justice… but I do know what it's like to wake up, every day and have to remember. That my sister was murdered, taken from me.” It was the kind of hurt that could hate and hate and hate. So deep that she was sure she could choke all of Roswell on it. But she would settle for Max Evans. “Right now, I think understand Wyatt Long a hell of a lot more than i could ever understand you.”

“Liz, he _killed_ you. He shot you in cold blood and left you to die.”

“I don't think about that,” Liz lied. “I think about what I would do if my father had papers, if I could  testify. I think about calling the calvary, the scientists, CNN. That if Agent Orange wouldn't find a way to blame alien invaders on _latinos_ I'd tell even him, too. I think, what is the cruelest thing I could do? Expose your family? Destroy your sister like you destroyed mine? Tell Noah and the bridge club, that she’s a murderer and a liar and incinerate the little life she built over dead bodies. I think about every second I wasted hoping I was wrong about you, that you really did care-”

She had said too much. He does that too her. But in that instant, she hates herself more than she hates him.

He’d withdrawn into himself, pulled back from the door and she ran, dignity lost. In her car she would fumble the keys in her shaking hands and wait and wait in the fear that he might follow. Forced the breath in and out to suppressed  tears and dry heaves that would not relent.

By the time the fire department arrived to scope out the smoking wreckage left by Max’s emotional baggage, Liz was near calm enough to grip the steering wheel. To push down the sound of gunshots inside of herself. Ignore the feel of fire licking at her skin. The safety of Max’s arms as pulled her close and how he’d destroyed it. Settled instead on the way she could still smell gasoline in her hair; how it left her feeling closer to Rosa than anything had in years.

* * *

 

Bargaining.

The bath was overfull long before she climbed in, but Liz could hardly mind it. Sunk her body down and let the water run over the tubside, the _talavera_ tiles, the clothes she'd left scattered. There wasn’t room enough anywhere to hold all that needed to be held. Why would a bathtub of all things be any different? The truth it seemed didn't fit inside of her or any of the places the Ortechos had always hidden their jagged little pieces. Not in her father's stowed away cashbox in case ICE came raiding, not the woven wicker baskets her mother had left behind, not the cardboard boxes marked ‘ROSA’ left under spoked headboards.

Liz scrubbed her face ruddy and red in the too-hot water. Her eyes rimmed red and not from sting of soap but a week’s worth of sleepless nights. A week since his confession, since Liz had extracted the truth through trial, error, the chemical separation of omission and culpability. She had gotten her answers. Rosa’s answers. It had filled every vacancy left by doubt. Replaced every hollow part of her that still hoped.

And the most cruel thing, the thing that hurt most; it made sense.

The inert minutia of it all; the pieces fitting together. The short-sightedness engendered by desperation, the faked the wreck and fire the set- Rosa in the front seat of course. _It was her car, why wouldn’t she driving?_

She could still see it. The flick of her vintage lighters, a metal match Rosa held aloft, letting the fire lick at her fingers, unfiltered cigarettes burning too close.

_“All pain’s the same, Lizzie.”_

The row of razor knicks along along her forearm. Liz snatching her arm up whenever she sees a new one. Rosa pulling down her sleeves back when she even bothered hiding them at all.

_“You can’t wish it away but- sometimes you can pick the hurt.”_

A bottle of pills that Liz was too afraid to tell her parents about, but she counted every tablet, morning and night. Made sure she wasn’t taking too many.

_“if the hurts an even trade-”_

The stars behind her eyes when she breaks the surface remind her of Rosa most of all; loud, searing, and fleeting. In the rush, the oxygen hurt her chest the way a whetstone hurts a knife. Dizzying, strangulated, sharper. And if the telltale drift of a shaking hand found her chest, felt for the prismatic band she knew to be gone, the prismatic brand across her heart, the etching in too perfect handwriting that just wouldn’t fade along with it. If Liz could claw it out, trade it back for the bullet, she would have taken her chances.

* * *

 

Depression.

The webbed cushion bleeding from the upholstery and the layer of grime on every surface, including Liz’s fifth tequila shot, would never have flown at the Wild Pony. Neither that or the road-map of uncleared glasses on the high counter; a litter of water-ringed napkins, plastic skewers, straws, a perspiring tower of highballs she stacked herself and the chipped cocktail glass Liz ordered first while lying to herself about the night’s intention.

Any dive bar worth its salt and lime pretended not to be a dive; or so Maria Deluca had always sworn. But Maria was a woman of principle who did not abide the over-serving of miserable drunks. So Liz was across town in a tourist trap with the bored sort of wait staff who shared none of her father’s enthusiasm for the eccentric to the mildly off-kilter. She also distantly remembered opening no less than two tabs, but she couldn’t be sure. Most things had settled behind the numbing haze.

She's well into her umpteenth drink when the bartender finally cut her off. “Just take my money,” Liz brandished a clip of bills, “and don’t tell me you care how many-”

“I don’t,” the blank faced server admitted, eyeing the cash in hand, “but he does.”

And there was Max Evans, one seat over, hat drawn over his eyes and Liz’s jacket already in hand.

Liz shook her head, draining the last of her shot. A maudlin emotion she no longer had a name for bubbled up from the intoxicated muddle, and all she could do was laugh, “why?”

Max didn’t look at her. “You called 911.”

Liz would have muttered that was ridiculous but somehow, Max had her phone. he positioned her thumb to the screen with a delicacy that made her shiver, a shiver that made her clench her teeth. Snatching her hand away, the screen clicked open and there in her call registry, a 911 call placed an hour ago. “You were on the line for half a minute. Said an alien broke into your home and threatened you with a cake knife. The dispatcher thought it was a prank-”

That felt distantly familiar. “That really sounds like you should be arresting Michael, not me.”

“Liz-”

“Y’know he tried,” Liz hiccupped, watching the bartender take refuge across the bar, away from the fuzz. “He tried to tell me taking away your sister’s powers was like, making me… ‘less Mexican’. You know, because of how dangerous being _latina_ makes me to society.”

Max pressed his mouth into a fine line. “He shouldn't have said that.”

“Yeah, not a, not a great opening line for a genius. But he did know when to change tactics, I’ll give him that. Told me all about your” Liz tapped her temple repeatedly, “with Isobel. That you can’t feel her anymore.”

Max was silent a long time. Rustled with his coat, tipped his hat away. “He shouldn’t have told you that either.”

Liz fidgeted with her cocktail glass. It was empty, save for the runny ice chips left at the bottom she stirred and stirred with a striped straw. “Are you still cold, Max?”

“Yes.”

It’s a soft admission without hesitation, as if offering up his suffering to her. Part of Liz was grateful for it, wanted to sink her teeth into it. But part of her was too used to the gracious dance of reticence. Of acquiescing to the hurt he carried.

“Let me drive you home-”

“I’d rather walk back to Colorado.”

“-or I’ll call Maria.”

That is was how Liz ended up stumbling determinedly out of the bar without taking Max Evan’s offered propped elbow, ignoring him opening the squad car front passenger door and his beleaguered sigh when she instead pulled at the rear seat handle instead.

“Liz. You can't keep doing this.”

“Doing what,” Liz groaned, the door latch unmoveable.

“Picking bars to get wasted at alone,” Max opened the door with ease, but struggled through the words nonetheless. “Its reckless.”

“How do you know that I- Of course. Keeping your distance doesn't mean you can't keep an eye on me. Living in a police state afterall.”

“I just need you to be-”

“Safe. Careful. Alive. Yeah, I know, Deputy Evans. You’ve made your feelings painfully, _painfully_ clear.”

And when the look on his face became unbearable, she turned and climbed to the patrol car- taking a graceless fall forward. 

“It smells in here,” Liz muttered face first in the thick vinyl seat. “Like bad life choices,” she couldn’t quite manage sitting up any longer, Max trying in vain to help her. “But I make a lot of bad choices, dont I? Didn’t get out of this town when I should have. Didn’t listen to Kyle. Made that serum. Let you convince me to keep it.”

Somehow Liz flipped her over, probably more with Max's help then her own volition. Above she can see the stained roof of the patrol car with it's constellation of dents and scuff marks. “Now your sister is in a pod; dying and not dying… because I brewed up some science fiction. Because that's just what I do now… Do you, do you even know what it does? It destabilizes- the, the charge in your cytoplasm. And your extracellular matrices. It bleeds you from the inside.” She’s poking Max in the chest, right where his uniform shirt unbuttoned, as if to demonstrate just where the poison would take root.

He catches her hand and doesn’t let go. He never does. “You can't do this to yourself Liz.”

“What? Feel bad? All of the time?” Liz laughed. A tear rolled down her cheek. “I mean, it's not like she has a plot next to Rosa in the cemetery but _still_.”

“You're gonna fix her.” It’s somehow a plea and a conviction all rolled in one.

“Of course I am," Liz through her head back. Attention once again fixed to the degenerate star mapped roof. She was going to name the cluster that looked like a cactus after Rosa. The one shaped like a phallus she would name after Isobel.

"You know what I never ask myself in the daylight? whether or not I should. I mean, I broke her, so I'll fix her… but other than that, why the hell I should care?” Liz was laughing. She wasn't sure why she was laughing.

Max, however, had given up his chivalrous attempts to set her right without putting his hands on her, lifting her by the shoulder, then with hands on her stomach. His eyes are dark by the time he is trying to buckle her in, gaze averted. He can’t look at her and Liz doesn’t accept it, doesn’t reign in the compulsion to grab him, drag him down to eye level.

“I hated her,” she whispered. “I hated her so much. For her choices and all the consequences she left. What she took with her. What she took from me." Liz is holding onto Max so hard her knuckles turned white, her nails dug into her palm. "But it wasn't her. It wasn’t her. She wasn't perfect. Or blameless. But she didn't- she didn't kill herself or anyone else. She didn’t choose to leave.” Which sister she meant felt less clear, less certain. Darkness eating the edge of her sight and the words pour out like shot after shot. “All that time, I hated her when I should have hated _you_.”

“So hate me,” he said, calm and sincere, as if she needed permission. As if it were that goddamn easy.

Because the trouble with hating Max was that it was exhausting. She was no good at it- and she needed to be good at everything. Practiced at it daily, down to a science. Conjuring up the dead, the charbroiled corpses. Replayed every lie and half truth. But none of it stuck to the insides of her mind. Not the faceless ICE agents or flying knives or gaslight fueled fears of losing her sanity ever deterred the weakness he inspired in her. The gnawing hope that despite all odds, she could be safe again if she only knew how to solve that equation that was Maxwell Evans.

“I know what me choosing to protect my family’s cost you. And I never meant for any of it. And I know that not enough." Max brushed tge hair out of her face she hadn't realized had been there. "I’ve lost you and I accepted it. But I cannot let you lose yourself. Not like this. The next time it happens I call Maria or Alex or Arturo.”

Liz just shook her head, his threat falling to the wayside. “You have no idea what you lost.” Slumped against the seat, pulling Max closer once again. He barely caught himself on the door-frame, lost his stupid hat and towered over her. She ran her fingers down his cheek and something in her revels and roils at the hitch in his breath before Max could pull away. “I still think about it, y'know. The turquoise mines at sunrise. What if just once, I kissed you. Once and never again. Maybe then you would feel it. To have something torn out of you- that you can never ever have back-”

And then the blackness sets over her. The last thing she almost remembered; Max and his stricken, wretched face.

* * *

 

Acceptance.

Her father finds out Wyatt Long tried to kill for the second time nearly five weeks after it happened. The Sanchezes are hospital orderlies assigned to mopping up after the bedridden racist and happen to love late night take out and running their mouths to the grill cook. Arturo accepted their condolences and well wishes for his family before seeing them out with a smile and all hell broke loose.

*

Liz is down the staircase by the fourth thundering crash and the rising voices. She expected a late night ICE raid, a robbery, Wyatt Long in a wheelchair with an assault rifle, not her father over the countertop, throwing a coffee pot at Deputy Evan’s head in their empty cafe screaming, “-that man hurt my daughter and you do nothing!”

“Papi!” Liz shouted, pushing between him and Max. Her red-faced father turned on her with the spatula he wielded. “Papi no one’s hurt me-”

“You are lying. Like your sister. I knew something was wrong. You don’t eat. You barely speak. _¡Te despiertas llorando!_ I thought it was because you missed your sister.”

“I do,” Liz insisted but her father powered on.

“No, that hateful man tried to cook you alive. And you let it happen,” Arturo stepped forward, narrow eyes set on Max. “You swore to me, Max Evans. All these years you swore-

“Swore what?” Liz stepped back, turned to Max, half daring him to lie to her again.

“Swore that if you ever came home, this wouldn’t happen. That I would protect you.” He manages to look her in the eye as he said it. It doesn’t infuriate Liz as much as she expected. “Mister Ortecho, I understand why you’re angry. At me, at her. But Liz didn’t tell you because doing nothing is the only thing keeping you in the country. If she testifies- if I testify- the Long family calls ICE.”

“Then I will turn myself over to ICE first! Do you hear me, _mija_?”

In a second, Liz saw the world close shut. The Crashdown OPEN sign never alight. No more churro pancakes. No out of key Spanish serenades on Sunday. No more nagging, sweet notes left on her door to eat more. Max stepped forward when she couldn’t, too stunned by the threat her father would lay himself at the mercy of.

“That doesn’t help her,” he argued. “Losing her father is the last thing she needs.”

“What she needs is to be safe! What sort of man am I if both my daughters-”

“I can promise you, Mister Ortecho, if Wyatt Long comes after her again it will be the last he ever does.” Max was the only one not shouting but the implication rang louder than anything. Liz shoved at him, annoyed that he’d feed into her father’s spiraling rage.

“You will aim higher than his kneecap,” Arturo commanded.

“Dead center,” Max agreed, unhesitating.

“Both of you, stop. Stop talking like I am not right here.”

A chirp from behind the counter cut through the tension. The alarm Liz set on her father’s phone ringing. A reminder him to take his pills.  “Papi, go upstairs. Take your meds. I’ll clean up.”

Arturo breathed in for maybe the first time, gave Max one last stern look, and disappeared up the stairs. He cursed in Spanish the whole way up.

*

“What are you even doing here?” she asked Max after he’d picked up a push-broom and swept up the remains of the dinner plate Arturo had thrown.

“Patrolling. He was out on the sidewalk and flagged me over.”

Liz sighed. “You should have kept driving.”

“I can’t just ignore him.”

“But you can make him promises you can’t keep?” Liz snatched the broom from his hands. “He doesn’t even know why he should angry at you.”

Max should have taken his cue to leave. But he didn’t move. “Do you want to tell him? Would it be easier for you if, if he knew?”

“No,” she scoffed, because it's the worst idea Max’s had since thinking she’d mistake blood for spilled ketchup. “He’ll end up in worst places than ICE custody if I do that. Like a sanitarium.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are!” she snapped, tired at long last of his apologies. Tired of the exasperating way she knew they were coming before he opened his mouth.

He was tired of it, too, or so it seemed. “What makes this easier for you? What do you need? And no, don't look at me like that. Give me an answer. Do you want me to ignore Arturo, whenever he calls worried about you? Or I can ignore the threats the Longs and the Fredericks are still making? I can throw out all the evidence I have on them, a folder full of hate mail they've sent to the cafe over the years, all their disgusting revenge fantasies. Or I could turn in my badge, cause I clearly don't deserve to wear it. Should I just leave town. Or throw myself down the Roswell gorge. I will do it. Just tell me…”

He's in her face again. She knew he hadn't meant to do it, but there he was. Closer than he had been in sheriff's station or the hospital when he put the serum in her hands or when he fought against her late night drinking binge that she still doesn't quite remember. “Do you need me to confess? I'll tell everyone, anyone you want, anyone who will listen. I'll tell them that I did it alone; because Isobel and Michael are off limits. They always will be.”

“That's not exactly justice, is it?”

Max scrubbed at his face, frustrated. “It's the best I can do.”

It felt pointless, telling him there was no undoing the damage, there was no unmaking the past. No easy fix to her lost vibrant sister, to an unpunished, unwitting killer, and the principles of a good man spent and failed.

But there was one thing. One thing he could do. The other thing that kept her up at night.

“You want to help me?” she asked, biting her lip.

“More than anything.”

Liz pointed to the counter. “Stand over there.”

Max looked confused.

“Just do it.”

Max crossed the room to lean against the counter, before pushing up straight again. Body stiff and eyes darkening with realization from his vantage of the windows. "Liz?"

“Don't move just—” She stepped in front of him. But it felt wrong. “ _Counting Crows_ was on, and I made you a shake, but I moved from around the counter, so where was I? Here, or—”

Max grasped her shoulders, moved her a step to the left. “There. Right there, until you spun around after the first shot and… the second hit you.”

Liz gripped her chest, where the bullet slipped through her armor, her rib cage, replaced her heart with lead.

“But after was it— Was it over quickly?”

Whatever Max had expected her to say, it hadn’t been that. “It… it only took a couple of seconds. You just,” Max took in a pained, struggling breath, “you bled out. On the floor.”

“That’s not what happened. Or, that's not what I remember.” Liz ran her hands through her hair. She didn’t know what to do with them. With any of it. “I remember, you calling my name. And how long it hurt. It didn’t feel like fading, or the way people imagine it. You don’t go _‘gentle into the good night’_. Dying for real, it… Dying felt like it would last forever. Because it’s supposed to right? But it didn’t, and now I keep thinking, if it was like that for Rosa? The _agony_ of it. Where everything in you fights and fights to stay, but it empties you anyway.”

Max slumped his shoulders, hand over his mouth. Just listening to every word like it was killing him. Like he would have rather she told him to fall down the Roswell gorge after all.

“Sometimes I still feel that empty. That everything in me is _still_ fighting to stay. Like I’m supposed to be gone, like I’m supposed to be with Rosa-”

“You’re not dead, Liz,” he promised her gently. “You’re not a ghost. You’re right here. You’re right here.”

And If Liz sagged into his arms, and closed her eyes, she let herself have one moment’s peace without the long calculation of whether she could trust Max Evans, his family or her own, if her sister could have been saved or if Liz even deserved to be spared.  _She died, she lived, she died-_

She survived.

It made sense only then, the weight of it all, the torment. She had been mourning more than the fresh wound of Rosa. She’d been mourning herself. It was selfish and it was stupid but Max held her anyway. Breathed into her hair and made more promises that tore at the tangled mess of her heart. Held her against himself, against everythinguntil time spun backwards and hope didn’t feel like a four letter word boring a hole through her. Held her until the lost years and lost chances didn’t feel so lost anymore. Until the two lovers, guilt and grief, pulled close around them and Liz let herself be convinced.

“You’re right here, Liz. You’re not going anywhere.”

 

 

 

_**fin.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics courtesy of Nirvana and the one and only Kurt Cobain, circa 1993.


End file.
